I am an English Language Fellow providing teacher training workshops and feedback to teachers in Kyrgyzstan so as to make their classes more interactive and fun.
"This website is not an official U.S. Department of State website.
The views and information presented are the English Language
Fellows' own and do not represent the English Language Fellow
Program or the U.S. Department of State."

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

October 30, 2012

Slept badly and consequently I overslept again. When I had
barely finished my coffee, I got a phone call from Nadya, my landlady,
indicating she needed the reading from some meter inside the flat before being
able to pay the corresponding bill. She tried to instruct me on how to find
this little window somewhere in the bathroom, but to no avail. She then called
Zarina, still on her honeymoon, and had her call me but we still couldn’t find
this meter, so Nadya gave up and said her husband would come along in few
minutes to find it and take care of a couple more things in the flat.

Samir came and dislodged a tile next to the bathroom sink,
and with the aid of his cell phone as a flashlight, read the hidden meter. I
then pointed out that the tea kettle’s plug had melted into the wall outlet and
he had to remove all of it from the wall, go out to buy a new one and return to
replace it. He also took care of shaving the two extension cords I had
purchased so they would fit into the wall outlets in both the kitchen and
bedroom. While he was there, the cable guy came in and opened a box in the
landing and reconnected the service.

I watched CNN for a while only to see that the entire
coverage was dedicated to the devastation wreaked by hurricane Sandy. I still
don’t understand how that company can neglect to cover the rest of the world
when something happens in the United States. They seem to persist in the belief
that the United States is the center of the universe. When they started to
repeat the same stuff, I just turned it off.

I got to Lingua past noon and found Idina sitting at the
computer that has been designated for me since I can’t read the Russian
commands on the other ones. She was, once again, sitting next to Mat, the Peace
Corps volunteer, and ignored my presence as she normally switches to another
computer when she sees me coming. Since I was only going to be there for a
couple of hours, I decided to take the high ground and not make a scene and
just moved into the teachers’ resource center to use the crappy computers
there. I will talk to Zarina tomorrow when she returns to work so she can have
a word with Idina about relinquishing that computer when I arrive.

Sophiat, who had been my chaperone at Zarina’s wedding, came
in then and we talked for a bit about the event and I reassured her I was
putting together a CD with all the photos from the wedding. Zamira, from the
Real Knowledge Learning Center, had promised to pick me up at Lingua so I could
attend their Halloween celebration as recommended by Natalia at the embassy.
She came by a little bit after two and picked me up in her own car.

Zamira is an amazing woman as she started this language school
seven years ago, with the help of her husband and father, has two children, is
completing a doctorate program online and manages to look gorgeous all the
time. She drove like a bat out of hell while talking non-stop on her cell phone.
I was a bit worried, but she kept reassuring that she had been driving for more
than ten years and knew exactly how to maneuver in the jam-packed streets of Bishkek
while talking up the whole time.

We arrived at a ramshackle building that shared its space
with a general store ran by Zamira’s brother. The parents and siblings were
assembled in a narrow reception area while the performers tried to do their
thing and as it has become usual by now, there was a lot of dead time between
performers as apparently rehearsal had not been one thing they had taken into
account. The one surprise was the performance of a cha-cha dance by a very cute
Korean student in a hot pink dress. She could teach me a move or two.

Thankfully, the program only lasted one hour and after more
photos were taken; we had a chance to tour the school classrooms, tiny, tiny
rooms and the sumptuous office where she and her father take care of all the
paperwork. I was dying for a cup of coffee Zamira ordered coffee and pastries
to be brought to the office. When it was time for her to take me back home, she
asked if I wanted to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner and I said yes. Her five
year old daughter came along and rode in back seat without a seat belt while
getting up quite frequently to look through the window.

The place was called Frunze and had a lot of customers even
though it was before five in the afternoon. I asked for eggplant in a spicy
sauce and steamed rice, but Zamira thought we needed at least five dishes and
ordered lamb, black mushrooms with beef, another type of mushroom salad and
vegetable fried rice not mention what apparently is routine here, to have
steamed buns with every Chinese meal. The food was brought to our table in just
minutes and everything was delicious, even the cold mushroom salad. I ate like
a pig, as did Fatima, the daughter, who seemed to have been starving at that
point.

Zamira insisted on my taking the leftovers home as she was
treating me to dinner. I told her I’d have enough food for a week and I told
her next time it’d be my turn to treat her to dinner or lunch. She wanted for
me to commit to coming back to her center for the webinar series, but I didn’t
make any promises about it.